A longtime Nob Hill substation for the Albuquerque Police Department along Route 66 once had a far different purpose — it was a Valentine diner, also along Route 66.
The substation has stood there for 24 years at Girard Boulevard and Central Avenue (aka Route 66). KRQE-TV has the rest of the story:
While it remains a functioning part of APD, the building is actually owned by the Albuquerque Museum. In the years before it was a police substation, the building was a privately owned diner called the Little House Café. It closed around 1993 and was donated to the Albuquerque Museum.
“We do have these wonderful, odd assortments of structures,” said Andrew Connors, director of the Albuquerque Museum. “And the ‘Little House Café’, which was a designed as a pre-fabricated diner, it was never seen as part of what the museum would be seen collection.”
Museum records indicate the former Little House Café was built around the era of World War II, in 1942. An eight-seat diner, the Little House Café was one of the dozens of prefabricated Valentine Diner buildings dotted across the United States. […]
Connors says Albuquerque’s Little House Café used to be downtown near what’s now the 8th and Central roundabout. For decades, the diner was operated by Joe and Della Hernandez. […]
While the building was in the Albuquerque Museum’s care between 1993 and 1997, it remained in storage with most of its inner content preserved. Around 1997, Albuquerque Police or other city officials suggested the building could be used as an APD substation.
The original diner items have remained at the Albuquerque Museum after the diner was converted into a police substation.
Here’s the station’s video about the diner/substation:
According to the Kansas Historical Society, which has collected extensive information about the Wichita-based Valentine diners, the Little House Diner in Albuquerque was an eight-stool Aristocrat model.
The Aristocrat was recognizable from the outside by the rounded parapet above the door and buttresses at the corners.
(Image of the Albuquerque Police substation in Nob Hill by John Ames via Google Maps)